Online FOCI workshop 2025-02-20

[jknockel]

The first of two Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) workshops in 2025 will happen on February 20th 17:00 - 21:30 UTC. This event is fully online and free. The event will take place on gather.town, and registration is required to receive a link for attending the event.

Event web site: https://foci.community/ Registration: https://foci.community/register

The program includes a keynote and 5 research presentations. The full schedule is available on the event website:

• Keynote: When the World Pushes Back: Enumerating Risks of Digital Accountability Research Ronald Deibert

• Extended Abstract: Using TURN Servers for Censorship Evasion Afonso Vilalonga, Kevin Gallagher, João Resende, Osman Yagan, and Henrique Domingos

• Is Custom Congestion Control a Bad Idea for Circumvention Tools? Wayne Wang, Diwen Xue, Piyush Kumar, Ayush Mishra, Anonymous, and Roya Ensafi

• I(ra)nconsistencies: Novel Insights into Iran's Censorship Felix Lange, Niklas Niere, Jonathan von Niessen, Dennis Suermann, Nico Heitmann, and Juraj Somorovsky

• The Mechanics of Surveillance in Leading Pakistani Mobile Apps Sana Habib, Mohammad Taha Khan, and Jedidiah R. Crandall

• Revisiting BAT Browsers: Protecting At-Risk Populations from Surveillance, Censorship, and Targeted Attacks Esther Rodriguez, Lobsang Gyatso, Tenzin Thayai, and Jedidiah R. Crandall

[klzgrad]

Is Custom Congestion Control a Bad Idea for Circumvention Tools?

Is this related to TCP brutal?

[cohosh]

The papers are now up if you want to check them out before the event on Thursday :) https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2025/

[Phoenix-999]

For those interested, here is the Farsi translation of this paper, with a focus on the section titled 'Inconsistencies – Novel Insights into Iran’s Censorship.' You can download it from the link below.

برای خوانندگان ایرانی و فارسی زبان 🇮🇷 نسخه ترجمه شده به زبان فارسی برگرفته از مقاله‌ای که توسط انجمن FOCI منتشر شده است و بخش ترجمه شده از این مقاله که تمرکز بر روی سانسور در ایران و نگاهی نوین به ناسازگاری‌ها در روش‌های فیلترینگ را بررسی و تحلیل می‌کند.

همچنین یک کنفرانس در این زمینه و زمینه‌های دیگر که در مقاله اصلی به آنها اشاره شده است در تاریخ ۲۰ فوریه ۲۰۲۵ به صورت آنلاین و کاملاً رایگان برای عموم تهیه دیده شده که در صورت علاقه‌مندی می‌توانید به صورت زنده به این کنفرانس ملحق شوید.

I(ra)nconsistencies - Novel Insights into Iran’s Censorship.pdf

[wkrp]

Is Custom Congestion Control a Bad Idea for Circumvention Tools?

Is this related to TCP brutal?

Yes, here are the links: https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2025/foci-2025-0001.php https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2025/foci-2025-0001.pdf

Using Hysteria and TCP-Brutal as case studies, we demonstrate how these custom CCAs produce traffic patterns that significantly deviate from standard TCP and QUIC behaviors, and further develop simple, threshold-based classifiers to show how a censor can distinguish such proxy traffic by its lack of response to congestion signals.

There is some interesting discussion about loss-based (e.g. TCP cubic) and rate-based (e.g. TCP BBR) congestion control algorithms with respect to Hysteria and TCP-Brutal.

[wkrp]

There will be another issue of FOCI in 2025, hybrid online/in-person, co-located with PETS. If you have work to submit, the submission deadline is 1 month from now, 2025-04-21.

https://foci.community/#cfp

Submission: April 21, 2025 Notification: May 30, 2025 Camera ready: TBD Hybrid FOCI: July 14, 2025 co-located with PETS in Washington D.C., USA

We are currently accepting submissions for Issue 2 (hybrid online/in-person event), due April 21st, 2025.

[wkrp]

The presentation videos for FOCI 2025, issue 1 are now online:

https://archive.org/details/FOCI25-1

• Opening remarks
• Keynote: When the World Pushes Back: Enumerating Risks of Digital Accountability Research Ronald Deibert
• Extended Abstract: Using TURN Servers for Censorship Evasion Afonso Vilalonga, Kevin Gallagher, João Resende, Osman Yagan, Henrique Domingos
• Is Custom Congestion Control a Bad Idea for Circumvention Tools? Wayne Wang, Diwen Xue, Piyush Kumar, Ayush Mishra, Anonymous, Roya Ensafi
• I(ra)nconsistencies: Novel Insights into Iran's Censorship Felix Lange, Niklas Niere, Jonathan von Niessen, Dennis Suermann, Nico Heitmann, Juraj Somorovsky
• Examining Leading Pakistani Mobile Apps Sana Habib, Mohammad Taha Khan, Jedidiah R. Crandall
• Revisiting BAT Browsers: Protecting At-Risk Populations from Surveillance, Censorship, and Targeted Attacks Esther Rodriguez, Lobsang Gyatso, Tenzin Thayai, Jedidiah R. Crandall
• Closing remarks